28 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



In this present day of plenty such acute anxiety about the nation's food 

 supply is difficult to understand, but in the early years of the twentieth 

 century it did not seem unreasonable. The march of industrialization had 

 promoted the growth of population to such an extent that there was in 

 actual fact a relative shortage of food. This condition, to the considerable 

 advantage of the farmer, was reflected in higher food prices. Thanks, at 

 least in part, to the world's increasing supply of gold, there was a generally 

 rising price level, but food prices were rising more rapidly than other 

 prices. This was true not only in the United States, but in Europe as well, 

 and in all other exporting countries. Not until the end of the decade was 

 the balance between population and food supply sufficiently stable to put 

 a check on the rising price of food. 



Confident that the nation, if it was to continue to eat, must find some 

 means of stimulating agriculture, publicists began to voice a demand for 

 more effective agricultural education. Theodore Roosevelt, never very far 

 from the head of any procession, urged the cause along. "We should strive 

 in every way," he said, "to aid in the education of the farmer for the farm, 

 and should shape our school system with this end in view." 03 A principal 

 aim of this movement was to promote more scientific methods of farming, 

 but efforts along this line were far from new. Ever since the creation of 

 the Department of Agriculture in 1862, the federal government had par- 

 ticipated actively in the scientific study of agriculture and in the dissemina- 

 tion of agricultural information. Colleges of agriculture, subsidized by 

 land grants under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1862, existed in nearly 

 every state not only to carry on direct instruction but also to maintain 

 experiment stations for original investigation and extension divisions for 

 projecting scientific findings beyond the campus to people on the farms. 

 State departments of agriculture and private agencies also did useful edu- 

 cational work. Even so, critics could say that as yet "comparatively little 

 really good farming has been done in the United States. . . . Speaking 

 broadly, we have not even begun to really farm." Only by means of better 

 farming, it was assumed, could the needs of the future for greater quan- 

 tities of farm produce be met. 54 



53. Wallaces' Farmer, XXXII (October n, 1907), p. 1145. 



54. Edwin G. Nourse, Government in Relation to Agriculture (Washington, 

 1940), pp. 872-74; Wallaces' Farmer, XXXIII (June 26, 1908), p. 830. 



